Jerry Halliday’s new friend was three years in the making. That’s longer than usual, but the materials are different now, and Halliday’s a stickler for details.

All that work will pay off this weekend when Halliday, the bawdy puppeteer from Hampton, features his new friend, Twinky Boy, at Cozzy’s Comedy Club in Newport News.

“Very few people do sculpted puppets anymore,” Halliday said. “They just use foam rubber covered with fabric and they all look alike. I could make a foam rubber puppet in a day, but it doesn’t have the expressions you get with a well carved, detailed traditional puppet. I want my puppets to look exquisite. I want them to come alive.”

He has made a career doing divas. He began with puppet versions of grand dames such as Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Carol Channing, and then developed his own sassy characters such as the straight-talking Sista Girl and the naughty Granny Good Times. He still gets laughs with the original Not-So-Holy Nun puppet he carved almost 40 years ago.

This weekend, Twinky Boy — a fresh-faced homosexual character — will make his first appearance at Cozzy’s after a couple of shows in Florida (where Halliday lives) and at MJ’s Tavern in Norfolk.

Like all of Halliday’s characters, Twinky Boy combines broad spoofs of stereotypes with a distinctive personality and wit that has appealed to both gay and straight audiences.

“He’s very lovable. He’s a strong gay character, not a pushover or a wimp,” Halliday said. “He says: ‘If you look up gay in the dictionary, my picture is there! I’m so gay, I fart sequins!’ The first time I did him for a gay crowd they ate it up with a spoon.”

He describes the process of making this puppet as “a nightmare.” He struggled with the new chemical formula for the rubber he uses to sculpt his figures, and he traveled all around Fort Lauderdale looking for the right fabrics. It took a month to attach the rhinestones to the puppet’s clothing.

“It was horrible,” he said. “I was calling (Cozzy’s owner Lorain Cosgrave) and saying, ‘Well, it took me two months, but I got the nose finished.’ I wanted him to have pursed lips, and it was difficult getting them to look just right when his mouth opens and closes.”

Halliday said there are many influences on the voice he developed for the new puppet, ranging from Truman Capote to the old Droopy Dog cartoon. He started writing material for Twinky Boy before he began sculpting the puppet. He’s got about a half-hour of stage material for this new character, and will also be doing Sista Girl and Granny Good Times this weekend.

Cozzy’s has been a familiar home to Halliday since it opened in the early 1990s. He first began making and performing with puppets when he was in grade school, and he has performed throughout Hampton Roads, from the old Wedgewood Dinner Theater in Williamsburg to the stage of Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk.

His act has always been racy, with a comedic style owing to great female performers such as Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers and Bette Midler.

“But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten cleaner,” he said. “It’s still very risque, but more with the double-entendres. There are no real four-letter words in the script anymore, so they only slip in if I’m picking that up from the crowd.”